Hallo Steinberg,
In a live situation, I’m searching for a way to have a loop with a bass line, some pads, whatever arpeggio (for example…) running in the back and being able to alter it by pressing chords (or single-fingered chord à la Yamaha Styles or alike). Of course, I don’t want some predefined arrangements like you might find on a PSR-36 or PSR-80 and I’m sure many others of that kind. I’d like to have the Styles engine transpose my own looped patterns.
Additionally, I’d like to choose between chromatic scale or some specific scale and tonic (C Maj, Bb Min…). Ideally, as my song progresses and has modulations, I might want, maybe using a chord track, have the current tonic and scale evolve, so that the chords I actually play stay in tune, i.e. sometimes pressing C key might trigger a C chord or Cm depending on the context, and G key, maybe a G7 dominant, but only G chord once we modulated to G Maj mode). And, I’d like ‘phase’ buttons to jump around the song loops (with a launchpad hooked up maybe or buttons for a touchscreen-enabled computer).
Finally, I might want patterns to differ depending on the note. The chorus of the Chase (Midnight Express) doesn’t follow the same bass line as the main parts, also there’s another voicing of the chords, this should be respected. Utterly, there might be variants of the patterns that one might want to trigger depending on where you’re in the song or manually.
E.g. Let’s use Chronologie IV of Jarre to explain:
See patterns and song below at the end.
The song has some parts that you might want to linger on (using a footswitch to tell when to go forward for example).
Besides, rather than having the sequencer play the chords, I’d like to play them myself, but I can’t of course play the bass line, the pad chords, the arpeggio with a single left hand, I let the track command to other tracks which note, scale, mode to play depending on the triggered chord (single-fingered, multi-fingered, whatever…) on the keyboard, current scale (chord track) and so on. Therefore, I’m not stuck in what the sequence says, I rather have a single bar looping, and I tell which chord to play, live! Therefore, I can choose to change much more things than to stick to a predefined à la 80’s New Wave song and explore new territories, try to improvise based on a library of patterns I created first, if that makes any sense.
Patterns:
- Intro (the ribbon down of the noisy thing)
- Intro 5 bars, loopable (Hong Kong’s version has 3 loops, studio’s only 1)
2.b break intro 2 bars, non loopable, goes to next - Main 5 bars, twice
- Bridge, a one time thing, non loopable, goes to next
4.b Bridge 2 - Chorus, loopable
5.b Chorus, where main voice plays alone - Breath break
- Break before heavy guitare coda
- Big 8
- Final
Song:
- Pattern 1 (intro), Chain next
- Pattern 2 (intro 5 bars, only 1 bar is looping and the player plays the chords Ab, E, ), Repeat until footswitch says to go forth
- Pattern 3 (main 5 bars), Repeat twice and chain
- Pattern 4 (bridge), Chain
- Pattern 5 (chorus), Repeat twice and chain
- Pattern 6 (breath break), chain
- Pattern 2b (break intro 2 bars), chain
- Pattern 3, Repeat twice and chain
- Pattern 4b (bridge 2), chain
- Pattern 8 (Big 8, too tah too tah… with diatonic ramp with delay… occasional chord glides…), chain
- Pattern 5 (chorus), Repeat twice and chain
- Pattern 7 (break before heavy guitare coda), chain
- Pattern 5b (chorus, play guitare over it), repeat ad nauseam until footswitch says to go forth
- Pattern 9 (final)
Does this make any sense to you? Thanks in advance if you can do something out of my maybe not so clear questions.
Regards.